


the normal things

by Sybill



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, F/M, Jealousy, Sisters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2014-10-19
Packaged: 2018-02-21 19:43:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2480138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sybill/pseuds/Sybill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lily came home with rainbow-striped hair her last year of Hogwarts.</p><p>“I suppose you're trying to be special again,” Petunia said, raising an eyebrow. “Or are you trying to <i>tell</i> us something with that ridiculous hairstyle?”</p><p>“Well, actually,” Lily said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the normal things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gaialux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaialux/gifts).



Lily came home with rainbow-striped hair her last year of Hogwarts.

“I suppose you're trying to be special again,” Petunia said, raising an eyebrow. “Or are you trying to _tell_ us something with that ridiculous hairstyle?”

“Well, actually,” Lily said. 

Miranda was nice. Too nice, really. If she hadn’t been quite so nice, their parents might have kept thinking the buzzcut and motorbike were bad news. As it was, about the third time she brought their mother flowers – “my ex-girlfriend’s a florist,” she said, shrugging modestly, “taught me a thing or two, and of course Lily talks to the roses” – their parents started treating her just as well as they treated Lily.

Which wasn’t _fair_. Petunia may have always been second to Lily, the golden child, but she’d never bargained on yet _another_ daughter supplanting her for second place. She was engaged to a thoroughly respectable young man, who mightn’t be as exciting as Lily and Miranda, but she was doing the decent thing, not gadding about with wands and talking to flowers.

It especially hurt that Miranda wasn’t even magical herself. They’d met at a lesbian coffeehouse for writers, to hear Lily tell it – Petunia wasn’t sure they hadn’t met at an orgy, because she’d always thought magical people must be a bit wonky about sex, with all their talk about magic wands – and Miranda hadn’t a spark of magic. She was entirely unfazed by it, however (“the way Lily cooks, it’s a good thing she knows how to use clean-up spells”), which always made Petunia feel a bit threatened. Magic wasn’t _decent_ , and another nonmagical person accepting it, that was just wrong.

When Lily came home for Christmas one year, she cleared her throat at the dinner table and stood up, holding Miranda’s hand. “We have something to tell you.”

“You’re pregnant,” Petunia said, under her breath, because usually it’d be “you’re getting married,” but obviously that wasn’t possible, because the government still had a bit of sense, despite people starting to say everybody should be allowed to get married.

Suprisingly, Lily blushed. “Well, actually.”

“No, _really_?” Petunia asked, genuinely upset now, because these were the two things she’d ever been able to do that Lily hadn’t beaten her to or upstaged – get married and have a baby – be _normal_ \- and now Lily was going to take one of them away? Her baby would probably come first, because Lily wasn’t even showing yet, and it would be born in legal matrimony, but that wouldn’t matter to their parents, who were already starting to exclaim in happiness.

She could see it now – her baby and Lily’s, at all the family gatherings, her normal adorable baby and the magical “alternative” child. (Although, now that she thought about it, how was Lily even pregnant? Magic, no doubt. Magical sex orgies, no doubt. She’d always wondered.)

“What I was going to say, before Petunia guessed part of it,” Lily said, wagging a laughingly scolding finger at her, “was that Miranda and I are getting married, and yes, we’re having a baby. In July.”

It could get worse. “But you can’t,” Vernon said, sounding as confused as Petunia felt.

Miranda smiled, looking up at Lily as if she was the most special person in the world. Petunia was well used to such looks being directed at Lily. “It’s legal in the magical world,” she said. “They have more problems with me being a Muggle than they do with me being a woman.”

“And we’re going to change that too,” Lily said, nodding decisively.

“Congratulations,” Petunia said.

The word sounded leaden in her mouth, but she couldn’t muster up any enthusiasm. Not now, when Lily had stolen everything that had ever given Petunia a moment of specialness, a moment of her very own. She knew it wasn’t a race, but when the golden magical sister took even the normal things that were left to you…

Next to her, Lily’s hair – now back to its usual lustrous red – shone in the setting sun.


End file.
